JACQUES, JAMES JOSEPH
Name: James Joseph Jacques
Rank/Branch: E2/US Marine Corps
Unit: G/2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division
Date of Birth: 09 October 1956
Home City of Record: Denver CO
Date of Loss: 15 May 1975
Country of Loss: Cambodia/Over Water
Loss Coordinates: 101800N 1030830E (TS965400)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 3
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: CH53A
Refno: 22003
Source: Compiled from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S.
Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families,
published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK in 1998.
Other Personnel in Incident: Lynn Blessing; Walter Boyd; Gregory S.
Copenhaver; Andres Garcia; Bernard Gause Jr., Daniel A. Benedett; Ronald J.
Manning; James R. Maxwell; Richard W. Rivenburgh; Antonio R. Sandoval;
Kelton R. Turner; Richard Van de Geer (all missing on CH53A); Gary L. Hall;
Joseph N. Hargrove; Danny G. Marshall (missing on Koah Tang Island); Ashton
N. Loney (missing from Koah Tang Island); Elwood E. Rumbaugh (missing from a
CH53A)
REMARKS: 750515 MAYAGUEZ INCIDENT LOSS
SYNOPSIS: When U.S. troops were pulled out of Southeast Asia in early 1975,
Vietnamese communist troops began capturing one city after another, with
Hue, Da Nang and Ban Me Thuot in March, Xuan Loc in April, and finally on
April 30, Saigon. In Cambodia, communist Khmer Rouge had captured the
capital city of Phnom Penh on April 17. The last Americans were evacuated
from Saigon during "Option IV", with U.S. Ambassador Martin departing on
April 29. The war, according to President Ford, "was finished."
2Lt. Richard Van de Geer, assigned to the 21st Special Ops Squadron at NKP,
had participated in the evacuation of Saigon, where helicopter pilots were
required to fly from the decks of the 7th Fleet carriers stationed some 500
miles offshore, fly over armed enemy-held territory, collect American and
allied personnel and return to the carriers via the same hazardous route,
heavily loaded with passengers. Van de Geer wrote to a friend, "We pulled
out close to 2,000 people. We couldn't pull out any more because it was
beyond human endurance to go any more..."
At 11:21 a.m. on May 12, the U.S. merchant ship MAYAGUEZ was seized by the
Khmer Rouge in the Gulf of Siam about 60 miles from the Cambodian coastline
and eight miles from Poulo Wai island. The ship, owned by Sea-Land
Corporation, was en route to Sattahip, Thailand from Hong Kong, carrying a
non-arms cargo for military bases in Thailand.
Capt. Charles T. Miller, a veteran of more than 40 years at sea, was on the
bridge. He had steered the ship within the boundaries of international
waters, but the Cambodians had recently claimed territorial waters 90 miles
from the coast of Cambodia. The thirty-nine seamen aboard were taken
prisoner.
President Ford ordered the aircraft carrier USS CORAL SEA, the guided
missile destroyer USS HENRY B. WILSON and the USS HOLT to the area of
seizure. By night, a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft located the MAYAGUEZ at
anchor off Poulo Wai island. Plans were made to rescue the crew. A
battalion landing team of 1,100 Marines was ordered flown from bases in
Okinawa and the Philippines to assemble at Utapao, Thailand in preparation
for the assault.
The first casualties of the effort to free the MAYAGUEZ are recorded on May
13 when a helicopter carrying Air Force security team personnel crashed en
route to Utapao, killing all 23 aboard.
Early in the morning of May 13, the Mayaguez was ordered to head for Koh
Tang island. Its crew was loaded aboard a Thai fishing boat and taken first
to Koh Tang, then to the mainland city of Kompong Song, then to Rong San Lem
island. U.S. intelligence had observed a cove with considerable activity on
the island of Koh Tang, a small five-mile long island about 35 miles off the
coast of Cambodia southwest of the city of Sihanoukville (Kampong Saom), and
believed that some of the crew might be held there. They also knew of the
Thai fishing boat, and had observed what appeared to be caucasians aboard
it, but it could not be determined if some or all of the crew was aboard.
The USS HOLT was ordered to seize and secure the MAYAGUEZ, still anchored
off Koh Tang. Marines were to land on the island and rescue any of the crew.
Navy jets from the USS CORAL SEA were to make four strikes on military
installments on the Cambodian mainland.
On May 15, the first wave of 179 Marines headed for the island aboard eight
Air Force "Jolly Green Giant" helicopters. Three Air Force helicopters
unloaded Marines from the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines onto the landing pad of
the USS HOLT and then headed back to Utapao to pick up the second wave of
Marines. Planes dropped tear gas on the MAYAGUEZ, and the USS HOLT pulled up
along side the vessel and the Marines stormed aboard. The MAYAGUEZ was
deserted.
Simultaneously, the Marines of the 2/9 were making their landings on two
other areas of the island. The eastern landing zone was on the cove side
where the Cambodian compound was located. The western landing zone was a
narrow spit of beach about 500 feet behind the compound on the other side of
the island. The Marines hoped to surround the compound.
As the first troops began to unload on both beaches, the Cambodians opened
fire. On the western beach, one helicopter was hit and flew off crippled, to
ditch in the ocean about 1 mile away. The pilot had just disembarked his
passengers, and he was rescued at sea.
Meanwhile, the eastern landing zone had become a disaster. The first two
helicopters landing were met by enemy fire. Ground commander, (now) Col.
Randall W. Austin had been told to expect between 20 and 40 Khmer Rouge
soldiers on the island. Instead, between 150 and 200 were encountered.
First, Lt. John Shramm's helicopter tore apart and crashed into the surf
after the rotor system was hit. All aboard made a dash for the tree line on
the beach.
One CH53A helicopter was flown by U.S. Air Force Major Howard Corson and
2Lt. Richard Van de Geer and carrying 23 U.S. Marines and 2 U.S. Navy
corpsmen, all from the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines. As the helicopter
approached the island, it was caught in a cross fire and hit by a rocket.
The severely damaged helicopter crashed into the sea just off the coast of
the island and exploded. To avoid enemy fire, survivors were forced to swim
out to sea for rescue. Twelve aboard, including Maj. Corson, were rescued.
Those missing from the helicopter were 2Lt. Richard Van de Geer, PFC Daniel
A. Benedett, PFC Lynn Blessing, PFC Walter Boyd, Lcpl. Gregory S.
Copenhaver, Lcpl. Andres Garcia, PFC James J. Jacques, PFC James R. Maxwell,
PFC Richard W. Rivenburgh, PFC Antonio R. Sandoval, PFC Kelton R. Turner,
all U.S. Marines. Also missing were HM1 Bernard Gause, Jr. and HM Ronald J.
Manning, the two corpsmen.
Other helicopters were more successful in landing their passengers. One
CH53A, however was not. SSgt. Elwood E. Rumbaugh's aircraft was near the
coastline when it was shot down. Rumbaugh is the only missing man from the
aircraft. The passengers were safely extracted. (It is not known whether the
passengers went down with the aircraft or whether they were rescued from the
island.)
By midmorning, when the Cambodians on the mainland began receiving reports
of the assault, they ordered the crew of the MAYAGUEZ on a Thai boat, and
then left. The MAYAGUEZ crew was recovered by the USS WILSON before the
second wave of Marines was deployed, but the second wave was ordered to
attack anyway.
Late in the afternoon, the assault force had consolidated its position on
the western landing zone and the eastern landing zone was evacuated at 6:00
p.m. By the end of the 14-hour operation, most of the Marines were extracted
from the island safely, with 50 wounded. Lcpl. Ashton Loney had been killed
by enemy fire, but his body could not be recovered.
Protecting the perimeter during the final evacuation was the machine gun
squad of PFC Gary L. Hall, Lcpl. Joseph N. Hargrove and Pvt. Danny G.
Marshall. They had run out of ammunition and were ordered to evacuate on the
last helicopter. It was their last contact. Maj. McNemar and Maj. James H.
Davis made a final sweep of the beach before boarding the helicopter and
were unable to locate them. They were declared Missing in Action.
The eighteen men missing from the MAYAGUEZ incident are listed among the
missing from the Vietnam war. Although authorities believe that there are
perhaps hundreds of American prisoners still alive in Southeast Asia from
the war, most are pessimistic about the fates of those captured by the Khmer
Rouge.
In 1988, the communist government of Kampuchea (Cambodia) announced that it
wished to return the remains of several dozen Americans to the United
States. (In fact, the number was higher than the official number of
Americans missing in Cambodia.) Because the U.S. does not officially
recognize the Cambodian government, it has refused to respond directly to
the Cambodians regarding the remains. Cambodia, wishing a direct
acknowledgment from the U.S. Government, still holds the remains.

The skeletal remains of a US
Marine helicopter retrieved from the jungle surrounding Koh Tang
by American MIA retrieval teams in 1995. PHOTO: DAVID VAN DER VEEN

A Tragedy of Errors

The Mayaguez Incident remembered

On May 12, 1975, the American
container ship `Mayaguez' was intercepted and its crew taken hostage
60km off the Cambodian coast by naval units of the newly-victorious
Khmer Rouge. Four days later, 41 American soldiers and an unknown
number of Cambodians were dead in the aftermath of a bungled rescue
attempt on the island of Koh Tang and an intensive bombardment of the
coastal town of Sihanoukville. In this special report the `Taipei
Times' looks back at the Mayaguez Incident, the final tragic act of
American military involvement in Southeast Asia in the 1970s.

By Phelim Kyne and Chea
Sotheacheath
TAIPEI TIMES CORRESPONDENT IN PHNOM PENH

The otherwise routine voyage of
the Sealand container ship Maya-guez to the Thai port of
Sattahip was brought to an abrupt halt on the afternoon of May 12,
1975, by a pair of Khmer Rouge patrol boats and their heavily-armed
crews.

Accused of violating Cambodian
territorial waters, the ship and its 39 member crew were diverted
toward the nearby island of Koh Tang.

Coming just 12 days after
America's humiliating retreat from Vietnam, the hostage-taking became
the focus of American government efforts to salvage a superpower
reputation tarnished by the recent twin Communist victories in
Cambodia and Vietnam.

The east side of Koh Tang
Island where 18 American servicemen died in a futile rescue
attempt of the hostage crew of the American container ship
Mayaguex. PHOTO: DAVID VAN DER VEEN

"The National Security Council
was convened and [then-US Secretary of State] Kissinger argued that
much more was at stake than the seizure of an American ship ... [that]
American credibility was more involved than ever," the British
journalist William Shawcross wrote in his 1979 book Sideshow:
Nixon, Kissinger and the Destruction of Cambodia. "Throughout the
crisis the Secretary insisted that for domestic and international
reasons, and particularly to impress the North Koreans, the US must
use force."

PHOTO: RALPH
WETTERHAHN

Although the Mayaguez crew
was transferred by fishing boat to the port of Sihanoukville on the
afternoon of May 13, American military intelligence believed that at
least half the crew remained on Koh Tang and plans were laid for a
rescue attempt by American Marines based in Thailand.

The plan went quickly wrong.

The KR vessel carrying the
Mayageuz crew to Sihanoukville was repeatedly strafed and
tear-gassed by American planes unsuccessfully seeking to force the
craft back to Koh Tang.

A group of the Mayaguez
crew later unsuccessfully tried suing the US government for chronic
health problems incurred as a result of those aerial attacks.

On the evening of May 14, 23 US
servicemen became the Mayaguez Incident's first fatalities
after their helicopter crashed en route from Thailand's Nakhon Phanom
airbase to the operation's departure point of U Tapao air base.

A US government memorial unveiled
in Phnom Penh in 1995 by visiting American Senator John McCain makes
no mention of those men.

At dawn on May 15, 170 Marines in
eight Knife and Jolly Green Giant helicopters approached Koh Tang in
the first stage of a rescue attempt in which little or no resistance
was expected from what American military intelligence had described as
an opposition force of 35-40 KR "irregulars."

Instead, they entered a firestorm
orchestrated by a well-armed and well dug-in platoon of
battle-hardened veterans of the April 17 "liberation" of Phnom Penh,
who brought their newly-acquired American guns and ammunition
confiscated from losing Lon Nol forces to bear on the invading force.

Within minutes, three helicopters
had been shot down and for the next 24 hours US forces fought for
their lives in a battle that eventually killed 16 KR combatants and
additional 18 American servicemen, their remains the focus of
intensive searches by US government MIA retrieval teams on Koh Tang
that continue to this day.

In a bitter irony unknown to the
Marines on Koh Tang until after their harrowing escape back to the US
aircraft carrier Coral Sea on the morning of May 16, the crew
of the Mayageuz had been released by their captors onto a Thai fishing
boat several hours before the attack had commenced.

At 10:08am on May 15, while US
helicopter gunships perforated with small arms fire struggled to land
reinforcements and evacuate wounded personnel from Koh Tang, the crew
of the Mayaguez was picked up by the US navy in the Gulf of
Thailand.

As Shawcross noted in Sideshow,
US President Ford was quick to describe the Mayaguez mission as
a success in that "...it did not only ignite confidence in the White
House ... it had an electrifying reaction as far as the American
people were concerned. It was a spark that set off a whole new sense
of confidence for them, too."

Calculating the costs of the
battle -- 41 dead servicemen in return for the safe return of 39
American seamen and the loss of life and property of Cambodians
unaware of their position in American foreign and domestic policy
objectives, Shawcross is unequivocal in his condemnation of Ford's
upbeat assessment of the results of the Mayageuz Incident.

"In the attacks on
[Sihanoukville] the railroad yard, the port, the oil refinery and the
airfield were virtually destroyed. At Ream naval base, 364 buildings
were flattened. Nine Cambodian vessels were sunk at sea. In order to
rescue the Marines on Koh Tang, the island was heavily bombarded ...
[ignoring] the August 1973 ban on bombing Indochina as well as the
1973 War Powers Act. The principal purpose of the bombing seem to have
been to punish the Cambodians and to reassert a concept of American
bellicosity, which the collapse of Phnom Penh and Saigon was seen to
have damaged."

Even more disturbingly, the
battalion commander of the Khmer Rouge forces on Koh Tang admitted
during an interview with the Taipei Times last week that,
contrary to long held Pentagon assertions to the contrary, American
servicemen had been abandoned on Koh Tang during the confusion of
their withdrawal.

"Ten days after the American
soldiers left Koh Tang, a tree-cutting detail sighted a figure taking
water from a well," Mao Run told the Taipei Times. "When they
investigated, they found boot marks which we knew had to belong to an
American soldier because our men only wore sandals."

According to Run, the abandoned
American Marine was found and executed shortly after.

Run's admission 25 years after
the fact adds credence to the belief held by many Marines who
participated in the Koh Tang operation of a "lost machine-gun team"
inadvertently left behind on the island.?

"We were told on the US Coral Sea
that a machine-gun team was killed by the KR as we withdrew from the
island, but years later I suspect that they were left behind," Koh
Tang marine veteran Dale L. Clark told the Taipei Times. "I
believe the US government knew the team was alive on the island
because I heard and saw preparations made on the USS Coral Sea to
return to the island, [but] no attempts were made to travel back to
the island for their recovery ... I suspect the US government canceled
the plans not wanting to have any more Marines killed during the
recovery."

Lieutenant Colonel Franklin
Childress, Public Affairs Officer of the Joint Task Force for Full
Accounting for MIAs in Hawaii was unaware of Run's allegations, but
assured the Taipei Times that MIA investigators were still
pursuing rumors that US Marines had been left behind on Koh Tang.

"The case of the three-man
machine-gun team is still under investigation," Childress said.
"There are still places to investigate and places to be excavated [for
MIA remains on Koh Tang]."

http://www.taipeitimes.com/

War veterans explain how a
simple plan went horribly wrong for the US

"I still remember feeling the
heat from the burning chopper next to us. I remember the flash and
watching our tail section fold away from the chopper. I remember
seeing my fellow Marines' bodies floating into the beach and others
swimming to open sea. Yes sir, hell is an understatement."

-- Larry Barnett, former US
Marine and survivor of the second of three US helicopters shot down
over Koh Tang on May 15, 1975.

By Phelim Kyne and Chea
SotheacheathTAIPEI TIMES CORRESPONDENT IN PHNOM PENH

At the pre-dawn briefing for the US Marines detailed to conduct the
rescue attempt of the Mayaguez crew, the planned operation
seemed deceptively straightforward.

"Our group's mission was to land
on the beach, link up with the other groups and move toward the middle
of the island [where] we were to link up and surround a compound
believed to hold the captured Mayaguez crew," explained Dale L.
Clark, a Marine fire team leader during the Koh Tang assault. "My
group had two US Army interpreters that spoke fluent Cambodian [who]
were equipped with bullhorns and tasked with influencing [the Khmer
Rouge] in giving up the crew without a fight."

Instead, what ensued was a
near-textbook exemplar of a military disaster: inexperienced troops
with inaccurate intelligence pitted against a seasoned enemy on its
home turf.

"Very few of our company had any
previous combat experience ... lots of the guys were fresh out of
boot-camp or like myself had just been in about a year," recalled Koh
Tang survivor Larry Barnett. I guess a fair general term to describe
our company was `greenhorns.'"

As they skimmed over the Pacific
toward their fateful encounter with the Khmer Rouge on Koh Tang, the
Marines were comforted by military intelligence reports of the light
resistance, if any, they would encounter upon arrival.

"We were told to expect the
operation to be easy and with a quick withdrawal," Clark said.
"We were told not to `lock and load' our weapons until told to do so
because combat was not expected."

Clark admits to going into "mild
shock" by the intensity of the KR resistance to the Marine landing on
Koh Tang.

"I could not believe what I saw
... the KR opened up on the first four helicopters that attempted to
land. I saw an aircraft gun emplacement near the edge of the island.
I also saw a lot of smoke coming from a tree line we flew over ...
from rifles being fired at the helicopters. I remember hugging
the bottom of the helicopter as we began evasive maneuvers to get out
of the kill zone. I looked up and saw fuel spraying all over the
inside of the front of the helicopter. I could not believe what
I was seeing."

Both Clark and Barnett describe
themselves and their fellow Marines as victims of a severe failure of
military intelligence regarding the strength of the force facing them
on Koh Tang.

"Being told not to expect
resistance and having the opposite experience ... tells me it was an
intelligence disaster," he said.

Barnett is even more explicit in
where to lay blame for what befell the Koh Tang operation.

"The intelligence that [the US
military] had on the island was good ... but it did not make its way
into the proper hands," Barnett explained. "Our company
commander and company gunnery sergeant received a photo of the
island's gun emplacements and bunkers the night before [the assault]
... but elected not to tell the troops for fear of making us more
nervous than we already were."

Surprise and dismay over the
events of May 15, 1975 were shared by Mao Run, platoon commander of
the KR forces on Koh Tang. Dispatched to the island the week
before in advance of an expected Vietnamese invasion, a landing by US
Marines was the last thing on his mind.

"I met those men [from the
Mayageuz] and we were friendly and kind to them ... I had no idea
they would be the cause of fighting between Cambodia and America," the
disabled veteran explained from his rural village in southern
Cambodia. "I think the Americans attacked us out of
revenge because they had lost the war and they used [the Mayageuz
Incident] as an excuse."

While post-battle American
estimates of the size of the KR force on Koh Tang range as high as 200
men, Run insists there were no more than forty fighters on the island
during the operation.

"We had 40 men, but only 20 men
took part in most of the fighting," he said. "But those American
troops were not professionals like the Khmer Rouge ... they spoke
loudly, laughed and smoked so it was easy to monitor their movements."

In the air above Run and his
fellow KR defenders, American planes and AC-130 Specter gunships
subjected their positions to withering cover fire that continued
uninterrupted throughout the operation.

At the height of the fighting the
KR positions were targeted with a 15,000 pound BLU-82 cluster bomb, at
the time the biggest non-nuclear weapon in the US arsenal, carving out
a huge crater still clearly visible on the island 25 years later.

"We lost six men on the island,
and another ten when their boats were sunk when approaching Koh Tang,"
Run recalled. "But many, many more people were killed by bombs
in [Sihanoukville].

While Clark and Barnett both
express interest in someday meeting with Run and his fellow Koh Tang
defenders in an effort "to bring closure" to the painful lingering
memories of the battle, Run makes it clear that any such reunion is
unlikely.

"[Koh Tang] was just like a
training exercise ... the real battle and the real victory was the
liberation of Phnom Penh on April 17," he said. "People say now
that the Khmer Rouge killed one million people [between 1975-1979] but
another million people must have been killed by American B-52 attacks
on Cambodia ... I saw whole villages destroyed by B-52s and I'll never
forget that."
URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2000/05/15/story/0000036101]